


you, me, and all that stuff we're so scared of

by Anonymous



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Books, Flashbacks, Harvard Era, Libraries, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Deposition, Sex in the Stacks, Yuletide 2018, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-10-01 03:47:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17236814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mark isn’t a robot. Mark’s flesh and blood and he does, in fact, think it’s hot as hell to have a little bit of exhibitionist sex in the library, thank you very much.Because the right answer, when someone asks you, “Is library sex a good idea?”, is yes. The right fucking answer is always yes.





	you, me, and all that stuff we're so scared of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aroceu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroceu/gifts).



> Once upon a time, closer when the film came out, a wrote a LOT of Social Network fic. A LOT a lot. Probably a couple hundred thousand words that are now maybe-still rotting/long deleted on Livejournal as I was never bothered to rescue them. 
> 
> When I saw your prompt (I sometimes browse the prompts for old fandoms of mine, for fun when I have the Yuletide-centric time), I read your request and recalled how many fandoms _I'd_ wanted to be writing in, near-a-decade on from when they were a "thing", and hell. I thought, why not: you ARE writing, and you deserve new fic, even if it's shit (this may very well be quite shit). So I looked at some of what _you'd_ written, and knew I had the perfect thing to gift (in theory) that I could finish if I could locate the strands of it I'd written ages ago. And find them I did. So I took said old skeleton of a fic and fleshed it out, and here we are.
> 
> Because once upon a time, WAY before the previously mentioned once-upon-a-time: I worked for a particular library. And while there wasn't one at the time of the scene here, film-chronology-wise, it was a close thing. _And_ because the libraries connect underground? There's an argument to be made that there IS, in fact, a cafe in Widener Library.
> 
> The book, however, is DEFINITELY of the genre that would have been categorised there, though, in the Pusey tunnel. That's just a fucking hilarious coincidence of the Library of Congress system. I like little nuggets like that. The title is another. Apologies, also, to Roger L. Welsch. Poor fellow, to be dragged into this even just implicitly.
> 
> Enjoy, Yuletide-friend!

They meet from different sides; largely because Eduardo is fucking paranoid but also because he’d pulled an all-nighter and needed _more_ caffeine. The new Lamont cafe isn’t great, but it’s convenient—overpriced and under-par for quality (like most things with _Veritas_ stamped on it), but Mark can’t really comment. He’s not much into coffee.

And Eduardo’s got a discerning tongue, but when he’s desperate, he’s desperate.

(Mark does not intend the mental-double entendre but, well. Sometimes people just get lucky like that.)

But they swipe in from different libraries, is the point, because then they “can’t figure us out Mark, Jesus, I can’t believe I’m even doing this”, though lately it becomes all that, with “again, fucking hell,” or “for the fifth time, damnit, we’ve just been _lucky_ ” tacked on at the end.

Whatever.

Mark climbs down the stairs with his hands in his hoodie pocket, and encounters all of no one because all of no one gives a shit about the stacks unless it’s time to write a damn paper, and now is not that time, or else. Mark doesn’t think it’s that time.

Eduardo probably would have mentioned if it were that time.

But yeah. Eduardo will walk down from Lamont, where he’ll have downed his latte like a good little boy outside the library turnstiles themselves, and Mark will descend from the Widener side, and they’ll meet in the very same, vaguely-warehouse-vibey, mostly-abandoned, echoey middle-of-a-fucking- _tunnel_ where they always meet. Despite Eduardo’s protestations to the contrary.

Because Mark isn’t a robot. Mark’s flesh and blood and he does, in fact, think it’s hot as hell to have a little bit of exhibitionist sex in the library, thank you very much.

Because the right answer, when someone asks you “Is library sex a good idea?”, is yes. The right fucking answer is always yes.

He counts the rows, gets halfway down the length of it to the wall, glancing up at the exposed ceilings with all the insulation fluff and piping, when he feels it, straight through his body, because that gaze, those eyes on him.

Mark shivers from the spine right through, not a horizontal up-and-down thing but a vertical sternum-straight-out thing; Mark feels it, every time.

He keeps walking, but he knows every steps that falls down to follow.

Hands slide over his shoulders, though, and it comes as a surprise even though Mark can hear the heavy breath draw closer; it’s a surprise and he’s pliant as a rule when he’s spun around and Eduardo claims his mouth, hard, just how Mark likes it.

He frowns when they part to gasp, anyway.

“You taste like coffee.” Mark wonders if Eduardo knows he means it less in a I-don’t-like-how-coffee-tastes way than in an I-like-how-you-taste way. Mark certainly won’t ever tell him.

“You say that literally every time.” Eduardo’s the only one Mark can think of who can get away with using _literally_ in a sentence, because he’s always using it literally.

Mark’s kind of turned on by the precision of it. Maybe because it’s sad with those plush fucking lips. Or with the whimsical contrast of that impossible fucking hair.

Mark’s not sure, so he just buries fingers in said hair and leans in to pull at Eduardo, to bite at said lips hungrily, greedily.

And Mark takes his time, licking the coffee-ground sharpness from every tooth, every line of that mouth until it’s faint enough to ignore. He pulls back, quirking an eyebrow of critique at Eduardo for inconveniencing him in such a way (and Eduardo, he fucking _laughs_ , the asshole), so Mark nips more than kisses his way down Eduardo’s body, and he pulls hard at the last buttons of his shirt, the tucked-in ones, and Mark wouldn’t admit trying to pop them because they don’t actually pop but that’s exactly what he was trying to do, and it really should have worked. His fingers are the most well-exercised part of his body.

He gives up when he can feel Eduardo’s length against his cheekbone, and prioritizes accordingly.

It’s a toss-up whether this is better: the taste and scent and savor of Eduardo at the base as Mark takes him deeper, or the bitter edge of _fucking coffee_ that tangs as Mark swallows.

No, wait. Not a toss-up.

Eduardo’s face when he comes would probably be a wonder of the world if the whole world was given permission to see it but they aren’t. That’s Mark’s, and Mark’s alone.

Fuck the world.

Mark lets Eduardo fall from his mouth and sinks onto Eduardo’s waits, grasping at his hips as he comes down just as hard: he wears a hoodie because he wears his hoodies, but they come in handy for when he shoots off in his jeans and the pocket can just innocently hang over the wet spot until he gets back to his dorm. Eduardo is panting as quietly as he can, but the sound still echoes around the high ceilings and the empty spaces, catches in all the nooks and crannies of the open cavern they’re hiding-but-not-at-all-hiding in. All they need is one lost freshman to wander by and they’re literally lit up by fluorescent lights.

Mark catches his breath, tucks Eduardo back in, and gets to his feet to stand on legs that aren’t shaky at all.

Not at all.

But that is when he sees it.

And maybe it’s that it fell when Mark pushed Eduardo at the waist, or when Eduardo flung his head back like he always does, all throes of passion bullshit, when Mark’s swallows him deep, or maybe when Mark had come up for air he’d banged it, jostled it free.

But there’s a book on the floor, loose from the confines of the stacks.

“No chance that’s foam from your fancy coffee drink, is it?” he points, and even Mark can’t pretend he’s not just grasping at straws, because no foam ever looked like _that_.

That is a telltale drop of not foam on the cover of the book, and Mark’s a little offended by it. Because Mark is a champion swallower, because it’s Mark, and he’s good at anything he puts his mind to, and he really actually does put his mind to sucking Eduardo off like a pro and not missing a single modicum in the process—despite commentary to the contrary from people like fucking _Dustin_ who assume he writes code in his mind while giving head.

This is not to say he has never done this. But it is to say that he doesn’t with Eduardo.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Eduardo whispers, his face draining of color, which is saying something given that he was flushed with the post-orgasmic high just seconds before. He starts to scramble, grabbing the book at wiping it with his thumb, trying to make it clean, to reverse that which can’t now be unseen. 

“Will it fit?” he gestures to Mark’s hoodie pocket helplessly, and that’s when Mark sees the title.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” he says, and then the laughter starts, ringing in the rafters and Mark can’t even think of complying with Eduardo’s frantic shhh-ing, which actually makes it worse.

“Wardo, oh my god, _Wardo_ , look at the title,” Mark damn near wheezes, and he’s not ashamed about it. “It’s fucking _weather lore_.”

And Mark thinks of Wardo’s bank account and his own bookshelf at home and he licks his lips to gather any extra taste that Eduardo left behind, and he kisses him for no reason, except that he can.

And they’re both leaving from Lamont, because security cares less there, giggling like idiots, stealing the come-book in Mark’s hoodie pocket, still sticky where they peeled off the barcode and stuck it on the shelf in their wake.

 

\--------

 

A lifetime later, other people would probably say that it’s telling. That it betrays something significant.

Mark would say fuck them, because it doesn’t betray or reveal anything. Mark is well aware of what it means.

Because no matter where he’s moved, what he’s done, or how many random crises-of-identity he’s quietly had in the privacy of his own home where he buys random shit he _thinks_ someone like him, his age, his “calibre” should possess, including books he’ll never read in his goddamn life—no matter what happens?

There’s always a bookshelf with appropriately high volumes lined up, so they can hide an old piece of Harvard property, all about the Plains region and its rain myths.

Mark’s read it. More times than he cares to admit.

(Thirty-seven. He’s read it thirty-seven times.)

(Like he said: he knows exactly what it means.)

What he doesn’t know, however—or else, doesn’t _understand_ —is what possesses him to buy a bubble-lined envelope, the plasticy waterproof kind, shove the book inside, seal it up with no note or explanation, and send it to the last place he knows Eduardo worked (it’s where he _does_ work, because Mark knows these things, makes damn _sure_ he knows these things).

He doesn’t pay for rush delivery. 

Whatever comes of this, if anything does come at all— _can_ come at all—he thinks maybe he wants it to come like they did at their best: not-so-quiet, practiced, easy, no pressure in it. All the time in the world.

Endless, echoing. Unashamed.

Hidden in plain sight.

(He’s pretty sure he’s delusional, really, but Mark is not a robot. Mark is flesh and blood and goddamn it—Mark can _hope_.)


End file.
